[Bill Finegan R.I.P.]

Again, please allow me to implore anybody & everybody who gives even half a damn to go back and listen to the intro on Finnegan's chart of "Serenade In Blue" for Glenn Miller & then ponder why it means to write something like that for a song like that for a band like that and have it pass into the "popular canon" w/o anybody seemingly as much as batting an eye.

It means you a bad mutterfunker, that's what it meansl.

Billy may wrote the intro to Serenade in Blue after Bill Finegan couldn't quite come up with what Glenn Miller wanted - although the rest of the arrangement is his. But yes - Bill Finegan was a superb arranger. Billy Strayhorn was a great fan of his work with Glenn Miller - which says everything about the quality of his work. Miller's work is often denigrated and whilst its true, it was 'pop' music for the kids and they played far too many novelty numbers, Miller never short changed his audience with the quality of the band's writing - and Bill Finegan was an essential part of that - not just 'Little Brown Jug' or 'Song of the Volga Boatmen' but even on the ballads his work is rich. Check out the end of Finegan's arrangement of the ballad 'Don't Cry, Cherie' where he manages to interweave the French National Anthem! I honestly believe Glenn Miller's band - and Bill Finegan's writing in particular - influenced the Claude Thornhill band (Thornhill played piano for Miller in his first band IIRC) - and thereby Gil Evans' writing. If Gil Evans created the Birth of the Cool, the 'Miller Sound' was its conception.

[Fabulous Dorsey Brothers on Columbia]

Thanks, Swinging Swede - and it's Flagler Drive incidentally on the Tommy Dorsey centennary box set, not Peace Pipe. Oh, well.

I had no idea there was more material recorded at these sessions - that's one more LP to comb Ebay for! I love this band. I got an awesome set of LPs from there issued on the Top Rank label, live recordings from the Cafe Rouge, titled Last Moments of Greatness - and then there's that great double CD from the Holiday Ballroom. Any other recommendations of particularly good stuff to look out for?

[Fabulous Dorsey Brothers on Columbia]

This is absolutely my favourite big band collection of all time. Putting aside the supremacy and beyond category-ness of Duke Ellington (a given), Basie's various bands, Woody Herman's first and thundering herds - and purely in terms of nostalgia, I discovered these recordings myself when I was sixteen years old - so I suppose nostalgia has a great deal to do with them being my absolute favourites - and the very essence of all a dance band should be. But don't you think Jimmy Dorsey is an under-rated player? His lacy, obliggato solos on the ballads here especially - hard edged but with such a melancholy undertow, make these recordings for me.

I, too, would love to have a discographical run down of the band. I do have recording details for Peace Pipe I think it is from the sentimental gentleman of swing box set - which I am happy to post unless someone - maybe with access to Lord? - can post all the session details. I would love to have these details, too.

[Ellington on Columbia]

another "dance" album whose name I forget but it has a "French" theme to it (or is that Bal Masque?).

Would that be Midnight in Paris? Not a particularly well regarded album but fine music, I think.

The Columbia period is my absolute favourite. I like the earlier Masterpieces and Ellington Uptown, too.

And not forgetting from the 1956-62 period my absolute favourite A Drum is a Woman. Columbia apparently had the tapes all ready to go to a double CD for the centennary in 99 and then the project was pulled for some reason. Will the CD ever see the light of day? I wish Sony BMG would do a proper re-issue of this material - the whole period - indeed all their Ellington holdings. In the digital download era has the possibility of this gone forever?